.../...OF A VERY SPECIAL SCHOOL

While Pookie is chasing Moths, but there is only one, I will continue about the German School and its pupils.

Most of the pupils were children of diplomates, ambassadors, or Company managers and all of them were used to often change school as the fathers had to move to other countries. So they really didn't care about teachers.

For me all this was very new, but as I have always liked to have fun in life, and didn't like anything which could be "authority" I immediately joined the group of "troublemakers".

For the first time, for many of us we were in a mixed class. This didn't exist yet in Germany, boys and girls were strictly separated. But here as we were so few pupils it wasn't possible and we only were 15 in our class.

Our punching ball was the french teacher. He really had a bad position. He was supposed to teach us french but a lot of my classmates spoke it already perfectly or it even was their mothertongue as sometimes mother or father were french. So when he started his lessons, everybody started to tease him. And unfortunately he was a very nice victim, he had two big faults, he was too kind and he had no authority.

One day after having interrupted, corrected and teased poor Mr. X he finally had enough and sent Arthur (the worst of all) out of the class where he should stay until lesson was over. Suddenly we heard a chicken cackle, first slowly and gutural and then more and more until very excited. Then we heard our Director shouting "who let the chicken in ?" and Arthur's voice "Sorry Sir, but I can't see any chicken". Now we started to cackle, and the "chicken" too. Again the Director's voice "Damned there must be a chicken here, open your eyes !" Arthur opened his eyes but didn't see anything at least not a chicken. Of course by now, poor Mr. X were completely forgotten and everybody started to immitate animals and of course we had a lot of fun.

We also used to exchange litte notes under the tables. Once the boy behind me pinched me in my bottom and a few notes later I wrote "No, of course I am not angry you can pinch or pet my bottom as long as you wish" and this note of course landed in Mr. X hands. He was scandalized ! He had a sado-macho couple in his class ! He stormed to the Director and made a big mess. My parents and of course the boy's were alerted. I didn't understand anything, neither the boy. What had we done that the adults got so excited ? I explained what happened to my father and of course he had to laugh although he told me to better pay attention to french lessons than to boys. Of course this story made a big storm through the whole school and everybody laughed at poor Mr. X his collegues did it silently behind his back (I suppose).

Now we (or honestly me) thought "Revenge" and what did we girls do ? As Mr. X also gave sport lessons in the horsestables, We all dressed up in winter clothes put big pillows in our trousers and scarfs covering head and face like muslim women. When he saw us his eyes almost felt out and then he ordered us to get dressed for sport ! But we (me) refused and told him we couldn't as the boys would maybe see too much of our bodies and get "bad" ideas. Of course we didn't know very much about "bad" ideas and in general were quite innocent. But this mess about the "pinched bottom" had made us curious and we all tried to find out what had caused such a scandal.

There were a lot more anecdotes, but here I learned something very important for the future to never make a mountain out of a molehill. Because the moral of the story was, if they (the adults)hadn't behaved so strangely, we would never had taken a dictionary or other books to find out what this were all about and became less and less "innocent".

I were in this school for two years and it had been the best school time I ever had. After that my father put me in a Belgian school and there I really had to learn french.

I am sure I would have been much better in maths, learning this way !